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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 38 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - 11:09 PM Anne lay back across Andy’s lumpy bed, gazing upwards
towards a ceiling which seemed to be fading out into darkness even half a
dozen candles couldn’t penetrate. Henry lurked somewhere up there, enjoying
his meal. Spiders and... snakes? Rats in the wall...
there was a story the Catfish mentioned once, in his book, by Poe – but no,
that was another. Still, considering the author was Poe, it would probably have ended badly for all involved. Or
maybe it had been an episode of the Twilight Zone, one of the old ones... |
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That had
been good weed.
Andy removed his shoes, let his toe feel around under the bed until it bumped
up against a thing. A guitar shaped thing with a fist-shaped hole in the back. He
reached down, pulled it up.
"Yukk!" Anne responded. "Did
the burglars smash that too?"
"Actually
no... it was trashed long ago. Otherwise, it would have been gone a
long time ago. Thing is... looks like shit, but it plays. Sort of..." and
he strummed a few chords of dubious provenance. He leaned back against the
wall, hoisting his feet up to make an X across Anne's body.
"Remember
our anarchists' song, from the U.?" he said before affecting a nasal Brooklyn
accent...
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"Oh... I'm da
sorta guy, what likes to roam around I organize da
people, help to tear the system down And when I find a boss, that scum
which pulls the people’s strings I cut 'em and I blow 'em up, an'
other ugly things They call me the Wobbily!
Yeah, I'm da Wobbully... I roam from town to town to town to
town... ... dah dah, de dah,
de dah... Anyway," he
shrugged as Anne wriggled sideways, hung both hands around him and kissed the
side of his neck. "Hey!" he exclaimed as she kicked a shoe to the
floor, revealing naked nylon. "Pheww!" he
recoiled. "Whatsamatta you... career women ain't supposed to have smelly feet..." "I can't help it!" Anne
said, lying back on the cluttered bed, pushing more papers over its edge. "I
wear my soles out all day chasing stupid men; this is the thanks I get? Foot shaming?"
“Maybe.” He picked up the guitar and resumed... That's right,
I'll roam from town to town... Until the Revolution comes... dah dah, de dah... And I'm as happy as a clown... For all the power that comes
spurting... from the barrel of
my gun... oh... I'm the kinda guy..." |
“Spurting?”
Anne recoiled...
Abruptly
he let the guitar slip down, off the bed. "Although your Catfish says that
anarchists are all right-wing, now, like that Ayn Rand
Paul who got beat up by his lawnmower man or those somebodies
Spanish. Capitol rioters.
"You've
got to stop being a fashion victim," he counseled.
"Naah... I'm way, way down on the ladder of the hierarchy of
victimization. Costa Ricans, unwed mothers harassed by pizza guys, corona people
with environmental illnesses. Smelly, sore feet are small potatoes. Easily satisfied
by a visit to the spa," she added, raising her left hand a few inches to
stroke his back.
"Easily?" Andy reached across, drew little circles
over the nearest breast with his index finger. "Looks to me like you're trying
to climb up that ladder to the twenty-five percent bracket..."
"Meaning
being with you's worse than hangin’
with Glenn at the Ivona? Cut the crap, kiddo," she
said, punching him lightly on the shoulder.
"No,
it's true. Really! Fact is, I'm really crazy! I just don't
care... all these years of Nixonism, Reaganism, Clintonism times two, Bushshish times three, Omawahabishm,
Trumpism, Bidenism... shischismism... just blowin’ my mind.
Spinning down that helter-skelter, through the black Cobb-hole to the dark
neoliberal circle of despair... all we are saying…"
And he
strummed another sour chord… “is get piece of ass…”
"You
should quit the Sanctuary, get back into music," Anne suggested, rumpling his
hair. "Start one of those gothic metal emo-rap bands, sing angry, pitiful songs about suicide, spiders...
now that all those other old grunge guys who’d be your competition are hanging
themselves. Or pimping prostitute
supplements and funeral insurance…"
"It
would be a choice. Probably no worse than the choices American kids
face today... go off to school, pick up a gun. Shoot yourself, waste the teacher,
classmates... or just go shooting into a crowd. Or drop out, join the Army and go shoot Costa Ricans…"
Anne lifted
her hand off his head, let it roam further south. "Boys!...
boys and their guns..."
"I
mean..." Andy started, "...isn't this adultery, or something like it?"
"We've
been over for years," Anne sighed. "The way I look at it..."
"You and me? Or you and Glenn? How
about
Glenn, how does he look at it? After all, he was always the sort of gun nut
behind his Clark Kent glasses…"
"You never pulled out of the sixties, even
though you were in diapers during the Summer of Love! Glenn got past all that,
but never survived the eighties and the nineties, and it wasn’t just watching
that Abba movie five times and dragging me to that goddam
Broadway production in his Toyota with a fuckin’ Kerry
sticker. Twice! Wants it all! Anything he can grab on the side
and then some Stepford doll to crawl home to... I mean,
if we had a home? Sublet the condo in
Maryland... the Air B&B people are scammers... this last year we've been living out of hotels.
Mostly good hotels, resorts even, but it's blow into
town... shmooze people into joining or at least thinking
about supporting the Coalition, take their money and move on, dot con..."
"Doesn't
sound like the forty-dollar door-to-door trip," Andy said.
"No
it's serious. Deadly serious!" she repeated, letting her wrist bounce on Andy's
groin like a zombie bouncing atop a trampoline. “Jack gets the big money from the money people
convinced he’ll take votes away from Democrats. Just like Tillerman,
working Bernie Sanders’ lists…”
“Russians?”
“My lips
are sealed,” Anne zipped an index finger across her mouth.
"You
really are the people I've fantasized about shooting," Andy slipped into the
first person. "All these thoughts that flicker through my head at night
between the screams and sirens on the street... bodies running, flying, I'm
just turning around and pointing... there! There! like
some heroine in that bloody pirate movie sequel Disney and Rob Zombie are collaborating
on now that the actors’ strike is over, the musical out of Brecht and Weill,
now that the Mouse is running Fox and the Guv’nor’s running
the Mouse out of Florida. Doing the
peoples' duty... nothing left beautiful or healthy whatsoever anymore, so why
the hell not do a Virginia Tech, Uvalde, Orlando or - what was that place with
the Jews, Pittsburgh? I feel! I understand the fascists now... we
romanticize victims, thinking they're better than us when we really know that
all real victims want out of life's a chance to turn the tables. Like the Kosovars, or Paltestinians, the shite Iraqis... that Zanzibar whoever, executing all the
old Saddam, Qaddafi and Bashir and the tunnel people
in Jerusalem... sad people..."
"That..."
Anne said, nose upturned, beginning to unbutton her silk blouse, "is about
the strangest pickup rap I've ever had dumped on me! At least in this century…"
"What
can I say?" Andy shrugged. "It's like the Bible tells you so... these
are the times to refrain from embracing. Deut. twenty seventeen. Or maybe it was Don Jones. Of course it doesn't help that abortion is now
illegal, or that the central metaphor for private life over the past generation
has become disease... AIDS, corona, wokeness…"
Anne lifted
her hand, raised it, slapped him sharply across the
cheek. "Well, fuck the Bible! How about Burger Jack... or back when it was
just Burger King before somebody overthrew that creepy King... sometimes you gotta break the rules! It was Burger King,
wasn't it... or was it somebody's sneakers squeaking? And sneaking... I mean,
speaking about squeakers, maybe I should be asking if you've got any rubbers
around here?"
Andy lurched
to his left, straddled her. "Good show, jolly good show!" he said,
affecting a British accent. "Excellent question... even
consummate! Striving to extrapolate the consequences..."
"Andy,
lose the voice!"
"Huh?"
"The voices!" Anne protested, "I always hated
it when you would use these phony voices. Be yourself!"
"Milady,
I..."
"Glenn always uses voices too, he thinks I
liked that about you, so he’s still imitatin’. Except
that it's OK with him... he doesn't have any self left to lose..."
"Maybe
while we are on the topic of consummation and prophylactics... new or used... I
ought to be asking you about Glenn,"
Andy said, the British voice spinning up and away like a bug towards Henry's
web.
"We
do great work together. The rest, not so much. His only infection is power."
Andy grunted,
sat up to unzip his fly. "So late in life, then, we resort to unsafe
sex..."
"There
is no such thing as safe sex," Anne retorted, sharply. "Western civilization
would collapse without its sexual inhibitions... outright prohibition or sublimation
through commodities, Jack says. If there was decent American sex, we wouldn't
have any art or culture, no economic progress. No iPhone Thirteens. Crime, and
the proximity of death - these stimulate creativity."
Andy looked
over his shoulder. "Why do I get the feeling that you're slumming?"
"Because this is a slum? Because you're so obsessed
with running yourself down in the service of some imaginary virtue... of
romanticizing poverty and powerlessness?"
"Glenn
was always the one who romanticized victims," Andy protested. "I, frankly,
despise them. Nothing but bums... bums!
Everybody who actually deals
with their situation does, too. It's easy to love the poor... at a
distance." Andy found himself staring at a sock he'd removed, twirling it
between his fingers and pondering. "And the caring communities, the
charity bums on salary to pacify the surplus with soup kitchens and maybe a cot
in a warehouse when the temperatures fall below freezing? So they won’t pick up their guns and agitate
for real change. Parasites! Like four years ago, when Glenn was here and asked
me to find him a homeless man for some PR stunt; white guy, middle-aged but not
a bum, or at least someone who could be cleaned up and passed off as a downsized
middle manager cut loose during the plague. I remember the whole spin; that was
just after the Catfish got kicked out of Congress..."
"He
retired," Anne objected. “They jiggered his district…”
"That’s
racist. Whatever... Glenn wanted to get him this laid-off factory guy, no women, they would have implied family desertion, which plays
into the hands of Republicans or the Democrats, depending on how you spin it. Middle
aged homeless white guy, Trump voter, preferably with a family... you weren't
here," Andy added, "I think he said that you were out in California."
"Good!
At least I did something right."
"Boy,
did Glenn look shitfaced when the guy I found for him said he wanted to get paid
for being in all those photos and videos. As if it wasn't enough to just be working
for the good of God, the Catfish and America... Glenn might be a Conk but he's
really social Darwinism to the bone. Poor people exist to serve him! Your
social service types to entertain and distract the unwanted, charity to keep
them from starving and embarrassing us in front of the Unapissers..."
"Bread
and circuses," Anne pointed out, literally pointing out her point with a finger
on his chin, "wouldn't have been worth diddly without
the Roman Legions and their swords keeping the masses in line..."
"But
they do shield the system from accountability," Andy began to protest when
Anne squirmed, arching her back and reaching beneath the bedspread to extract an
uncomfortable swath of anti-Conk propaganda that Andy had collected over the past
month. Fliers from the PLO, IRA and a dozen other been-around-forever initials
and the new, obscure movements with their slogans, forms and formal letters
from Disson’s office, bills...all of which, with
Andy's professorial jacket, were shoved over the edge of the bed, sliding onto
the threadbare carpet while Anne pressed her lips to his ear and whispered,
harshly...
"Are
we gonna talk politics or fuck?"
And finally
he couldn't help but smile. "If you're positive that I'm not being a homewrecker," he said, beginning to fumble with his
shirt.
"What
home?" Anne interrupted. "At worst, a hotelwrecker. And let me... I'll be careful," she
slapped his hand away. "It doesn't impress me, men ripping off their shirts.
Glenn's done it too many times. You, on the other hand, can't afford to be
having shirts ripped off... trust me! I'll be careful, that's a very nice shirt.
The kind of white shirt that white people used to wear to go
down South with, in, and get shot in. No homes to wreck. Glenn has to replicate the people
he sees on television or in magazine ads..."
"He
could be in a men's clothing ad, he's in better shape than I am,"
Andy suggested, even as he loosened Anne's belt and began sliding her Chanel
skirt downwards. "Works out? And his hair's never out of place! It's even
better than the hair on the men, here, who read the news on television..."
"Yeah,
but he wouldn't make it on TV... too twitchy. He needs to see a doctor, take the
right sort of pills, but he won't... instead he takes other, wrong, pills and
drinks. And plays with his gun, everywhere... that's what he says… my glass, my
gal, my gun. His Henry!" she added, wincing as Andy's teeth closed firmly
around one nipple.
He ran
tongue down her breastalopes... through one valley
and back up the other. "Here the brigadistas come,"
he whispered, "marching cross the hills of Costa Rica, down to San
Jose!" Her arms flailed briefly, then plunged
downwards, raking his bare back while he pulled his pants down, kicked them
off, raising his voice as he twisted atop her. "Resolutely the Red Army
drives towards the caves of Yunnan..."
He grasped
both her hips... she reached for his hair, then let it go, shaking the loose
strands that had come out over the side of the bed, gripping his buttocks instead.
"More!" she cried...
"In
a Parisian street, the people's battering-ram explodes against the gates of the
Bastille..."
"More!"
"In
the Costa Rican rainforest, Comandante Cuatro's massive anaconda squeezes through the tentflaps of imperialist headquarters..."
She bit
his lip, but gently, he thrust left, then right, then left again. Their coupling
concluded in the instant that it takes for a political commercial to flash
onscreen... one of those hit pieces that proliferate during the witching season
between Halloween and Election Day when all argument and posture have been
boiled down to symbolism… waving flags, marching soldiers, screeching clergymen.
Still, her contractions kept wringing
every last drop of moisture out of his body... as if he were an orange in a
juicer... convulsions that broke his patter down to a series of incoherent grunts,
continuing even after he had offered up all that he had to give. The mocking
refrain of that old "Hot Rod Lincoln" rattled through his brain... "all
there is, and there ain't no more..." still she
rocked, heaved and thrust, finally throwing the weight of her body sideways to
twist Andy over, pin him on his back so he was left to look up into the dark,
flickering domain of candleglow and spiders,
wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into, even as he heard the 'whup whup whup!'
of another UNAPIS helicopter somewhere over the street, between Anne's gasps,
the old voices skittering through his thoughts like rats in the hotel walls
that kept assuring him that it didn't matter...
Nothing
mattered...
Nothing.
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SATURDAY the EIGHTH - 11:17 PM
"Motherfuckers!"
Glenn
Savitt spat this out in the near-empty Satellite Lounge,
three doors down from the Ivona. His audience, a
weary Massachusetts Conk trying to close their deal on the Ethics Caucus,
winced and stared down into the swirling tremors of his scotch and ice, recalling
the old subliminal seduction hysteria... monsters airbrushed into booze ads to
torment vulnerable alcoholics into ordering another drink. Now, he was a
distressed, defeated and... of course... older babysitter
to semi-important madmen, measuring the longevity of his plight as a lobster
might contemplate the rising temperature of the pot he'd been summarily dropped
into.
"Whole
fuckin' Convention's laughing at us!" Glenn snarled.
"An’ my woman? She's out dancin'
with all of ‘em... Colorado cowboys, all lined up to take a poke at her? You
know the Davis Mansion, where they're whooping it up... I picketed
that place once, when Casper, the friendly ghost; Weinstein or what-the-fuck
Reagan’s man came into town! Used to live here, you know?"
"He
did? Good ol’ Cap? Really?" the Conk pretended interest, surreptitiously
checking his watch.
"Not
Casper," Glenn spat, "me! People from here know how to keep their bitches
in line, how to settle problems," Glenn said, with an ominous determination.
"Lemme tell you about this guy here, used to be
the local big-shot, name of Mark Cobb..."
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RETURN
to "BLACK HELICOPTERS" directory
VIEW CURRENT COLUMN by JACK "CATFISH"
PARNELL... "ENTROPY and RENAISSANCE"
HAVE A GLANCE at the current episode of our occult
serial, wherein a young American encounters bizarre foreign artists and
occultists – from Aleister Crowley and William Yeats
to Alfred Jarry and a young, feral Adolph Hitler…
SQUIRM! as insurance salesmen
gather at the boss’ home to compete for the position of a dead Vice-President…
where their ordeals will soon include giant lobsters, fire, escaped slaves and
savage bounty hunters, a mousetrap and bottles of the insidious blue champagne
from Bad China, in…
And THRILL!… to the story of the last successful Native American
revolt in the jungles of southeastern Mexico where an implacable tribe of
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“THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ”